The Death of the Monthly Active User Redefining User Metrics For The App Era

The Monthly Active User (MAU) metric is the default measure of digital services but its usefulness is lessening. While it offered desktop-era services a better alternative to page views, its use for mobile apps is increasingly anachronistic. With the advent of smartphones, users are absorbing app-based services far more intimately into their lives, consequently leading to frequency of activity going far beyond monthly usage. To focus on whether someone briefly looks at a website or app in an environment in which weekly and daily user engagement is ever more pervasive quite simply misses the point. Digitally native companies such as those from the mobile gaming industry have already long moved beyond the limitations of the MAU, now it is the turn of the rest of the pack to follow.

Companies Mentioned In This Report: Amazon, Apple, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Instagram, King, Mashable, Netflix, Path, QQ Music, Snapchat, Spotify, SoundCloud, Supercell, Twitter, Vine, WhatsApp, YouTube, Zynga

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